Though even that's going pretty
far. Demetrio, you should see the scars they've given me ... all over
my body, not to speak of my soul! To hell with women. They're the
devil, that's what they are! You may have noticed I steer clear of
them. You know why. And don't think I don't know what I'm talking
about. I've had a hell of a lot of experience and that's no lie!"

"What do you say, Pancracio? When are we going back to the ranch?"
Demetrio insisted, blowing gray clouds of tobacco smoke into the air.

"Say the day, I'm game. You know I left my woman there too!"

"Your woman, hell!" Quail said, disgruntled and sleepy.

"All right, then, our woman! It's a good thing you're kindhearted so we
all can enjoy her when you bring her over," Manteca murmured.

"That's right, Pancracio, bring one-eyed Maria Antonia. We're all
getting pretty cold around here," Meco shouted from a distance.

The crowd broke into peals of laughter. Pancracio and Manteca vied with
each other in calling forth oaths and obscenity.

XX

"Villa is coming!"

The news spread like lightning. Villa--the magic word! The Great Man,
the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance,
exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor.

"Our Mexican Napoleon!" exclaimed Luis Cervantes.

"Yes! The Aztec Eagle! He buried his beak of steel in the head of
Huerta the serpent!" Solis, Natera's chief of staff, remarked somewhat
ironically, adding: "At least, that's how I expressed it in a speech I
made at Ciudad Juarez!"

The two sat at the bar of the saloon, drinking beer. The "high hats,"
wearing mufflers around their necks and thick rough leather shoes on
their feet, ate and drank endlessly. Their gnarled hands loomed across
table, across bar. All their talk was of Villa and his men. The tales
Natera's followers related won gasps of astonishment from Demetrio's
men. Villa! Villa's battles! Ciudad Juarez ... Tierra Blanca ...
Chihuahua ... Torreon....

The bare facts, the mere citing of observation and experience meant
nothing. But the real story, with its extraordinary contrasts of high
exploits and abysmal cruelties was quite different. Villa, indomitable
lord of the sierra, the eternal victim of all governments ... Villa
tracked, hunted down like a wild beast ... Villa the reincarnation of
the old legend; Villa as Providence, the bandit, that passes through
the world armed with the blazing torch of an ideal: to rob the ric